


Control Your Fear, It's Clear

by RidleyMocki



Series: Pynch fics [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam has exams and is freaking out, Adam is dramatic its great, An embarrassing amount of kissing, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, High School, Kissing, M/M, POV Adam Parrish, Pynch Week, Ronan had no chill, he knows hes hot, so very self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 13:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11670024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RidleyMocki/pseuds/RidleyMocki
Summary: The day has come for Adam to begin his final exams, the culmination of all his hard work, and now that it's here, he's freaking out in the boys' bathroom, of all places. But he doesn't have to deal with this stuff alone, anymore. Ronan surprises him and reminds Adam how rewarding taking risks can be.





	Control Your Fear, It's Clear

**Author's Note:**

> This is done for Pynch Week 17 to the prompt 'What are you doing here?'. Apparently I just have no restraint at all because this has, like, ALL the kissing. Hopefully it has plot as well, haha. 
> 
> Title is from Matt Corby's 'Resolution', which, if you haven't heard it yet will probably change your life.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Enjoy!

In twenty minutes, Adam’s future would start to be determined. In twenty minutes he’d sit at a table that would probably have a tilt in it and pour out the contents of his intellect on flimsy white pieces of paper. His hand would probably cramp, or he’d misread something and it would all go to shit. At the end of more hours than he wanted to think about, he’d hand over a piece of his soul and it would be weighed and measured to see if all his hard work had done any good. He’d do that again tomorrow and the next day until it was all over and his fate was sealed.

“You’re being an idiot,” he said to his reflection, and growled at himself as he splashed his face with cold water again. “Everything will be fine. Stop being dramatic.” He pressed his forehead to the glass of the mirror and took deep breaths. He was usually fine with assessments, could walk in, secure in the knowledge that he’d done the hard work, and complete the task with a militant calm. But these were his final exams, and just a few weeks ago he’d been possessed by a demon and his friend had died, then been revived by a magical forest. So all in all, his stress was high. Sue him.

It wasn’t even that he thought he would do badly, necessarily. He knew he would do well, stored all the information correctly and knew how to convey it. But doubt is a tricky thing that doesn’t care about the facts at hand, self-doubt doubly so. As he scraped a paper towel over his face, Adam felt like he wanted to run. He’d spent so long running towards Aglionby and the future it promised, and now it just made him feel sick. “Stop it, stop it, stop it…”

He was meant to have more control than this. Adam had built himself up through discipline and determination and he’d be damned if he failed now because he panicked. As he looked at himself sternly in the mirror, he felt the warring forces in him scrabble for his attention. His control usually gave him balance. The contradictions that made up his character only rested in balance because he kept them strictly apart, no mingling, no polluting. What he wanted was untouched by what he needed. What he loved was untouched by what he hated. What made him safe could never be what made him afraid. But now, looking down the barrel of his possible future, things began to overlap. Academic success was always going to be his way out, the way that he would make up for the bad of his past with an almost inevitable good. The surety of what this school and then college could do for him always represented safety – he knew the path ahead, he just had to follow. But now, he was goddamn terrified. And he didn’t know how to want something at the same time he was scared of it. 

He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to know.

The door to the boys’ bathroom burst suddenly open, the bang of it ringing off the walls, and Adam reared back, busied himself with scrunching up the towel and tossing it, not casting the intruder a single glance. 

“You’re not freaking out are you?”

Adam whirled. Ronan was standing at the end of the row of sinks, arms crossed but his smile smug. Adam blinked. “What are you doing here?” His heart leapt excitedly in his chest, a nice reprieve from the nervous lurching, and Ronan smiled wider at his obvious surprise. He looked good, frustratingly so, in black head to toe and his brilliant blue eyes turned liquid in the light from the window. Adam felt drawn to him by the unique gravity of that smile. And annoyed; Ronan was a unique creature that could elicit both emotions at the same time.

“Figured you’d need a distraction,” Ronan said lowly, and began to step forward, crowding into Adam’s space. The way he moved, fluid but sharp, a coiled whip, would have scared anyone in their right mind. But Adam was a little crazy over Ronan Lynch, and as his shoulders dropped in relief at seeing him, he moved forward too, just to touch him all the sooner.

Ronan’s hands came up to frame his face and he kissed him hard, bodies pressing immediately together. There had been a number of times over the last weeks where their kisses had managed to wipe Adam’s mind absolutely clean, and this was one of them. They wound around each other, Ronan licking into his mouth and getting a groan out of him. 

At first, when Adam had first kissed him and they’d begun this, the feeling of being circled in someone’s arms, feeling their laughter against his lips, had made Adam nervous. Too close, too heady, too vulnerable. But he’d realised soon enough it was a power all its own, to occupy someone’s attention so completely. And to occupy _Ronan’s_ attention like this was a very powerful thing, indeed. Adam craved it, the give and take, this cherished feeling. 

He felt the movement of the muscles in Ronan’s shoulder as he slid a hand down Adam’s spine, curling his arm around his waist. Adam scratched at the edge of Ronan’s buzzed hair, the prickle of it grounding and perfect as their mouths worked to make him forget. After too many minutes and too few breaths, Ronan withdrew, but kept passing a hand up and down Adam’s back, warm and reassuring.

“Distracted?” Ronan said, and his voice was a mess. Adam huffed, pressed another firm but quick kiss to Ronan’s reddened lips, biting at the bottom one before leaning back to scowl at him.

“How the fuck am I supposed to do this exam, now?” He watched Ronan’s grin grow wide and pleased, his perfect teeth infuriating.

“Same way you do everything,” he bent his head and nipped at the hinge of Adam’s jaw, “stubbornly.” Ronan continued to kiss down his neck, not seeing the way Adam rolled his eyes, though he probably knew anyway. 

It occurred to Adam as he lost himself in the fact of Ronan, the smell and shape of him, that his exams weren’t the first time he’d wanted something and been scared of it, too. _Don’t break him, Adam,_ Gansey had said. But when Adam had first kissed him, replying to the question Ronan had left hanging on his lip earlier that night, Adam was sure that it was going to be himself that shook apart. When they lounged in silence and Ronan pressed Adam’s fingers to his mouth, Adam was afraid. No one had told Ronan not to break Adam. No one had told Adam what to do with someone’s love, how to treat it well. He’d wanted it violently, wanted it with a white hot need that he’d never felt before, not for doing well at school, not for breaking free of this town. He’d wanted Ronan like nothing else and it was still, in its own way, the scariest thing he’d ever done. 

He nudged his nose into Ronan’s throat and breathed him in, allowing himself to be held. Weeks ago, what he wanted had won out against what he feared. It could do so again, he figured.

“I have to go,” he mumbled. Ronan made a noise of assent and squeezed him once before moving away. He still wore a smirk, but it was smaller, private.

“You’re an idiot if you think you’re not gonna beat all of them,” he said quietly.

Adam smiled. “Trust you to make me stop being an idiot, then.”

Ronan clapped him on the shoulder and grinned, apparently glad he’d succeeded. Adam’s chest felt warm at the idea that his boyfriend would’ve had to drive up from the Barns – and early in the morning, too – just to give him a pep talk. It was so uncharacteristic on one level, and so predictable on another. As Ronan steered him towards the door, Adam got caught up in imagining them being able to celebrate at the end of the week, the whole group of them together and laughing, with a weight off his own mind. He didn’t think about his exam at all as they walked down the corridor towards the great hall, just enjoyed the weight of Ronan’s arm over his shoulders and his musing.

As they approached, a few boys in the line waiting to enter caught sight of Ronan and began to whisper amongst themselves. “God, you’d think they had nothing better to gossip about,” Ronan said.

“Well since you left they probably haven’t,” and Adam poked him in the ribs, laughing under his breath. They came to a stop and suddenly Ronan was tugging at his hand, getting him to turn into Ronan’s body and in a heartbeat he was being kissed, again. Adam heard a choked off noise from behind them but it didn’t matter, none of it mattered. They parted breathless and smiling.

“There,” Ronan said, “they can gossip about _that_.” Adam laughed and swatted him away, protesting that he really had to go. He felt Ronan slide a hand down his back one more time before he stepped back. To the boys still looking over at them, Ronan gave what could only be described as a threatening nod, which Adam found quietly hilarious, and then he was off, walking out with a sway to his hips and a smirk over his shoulder that Adam vowed to pay him back for at his earliest opportunity.

Adam joined the line, basking in the reproachful looks from a few, and checked in with himself. His nerves were all but gone, sensible concern taking their place, and the knowledge he needed for this exam felt like it was all there, just waiting for summons. He might be able to do this, after all.

He shifted in place as he waited and frowned when he felt something in his back pocket, quickly digging it out. It took a few seconds for him to realise what he was seeing, but when he understood, he couldn’t have helped his smile if he tried. In his palm was the single, pale coloured card of The Magician from the deck Persephone had left him. Ronan must have snuck it into his pocket just before he left. 

“Bastard,” Adam said to himself, staring reverently at the card. The magician was a figure who could do anything, who harnessed everything available to him and used it well, who determined his own destiny with sheer force of will. The magician was Adam, and Ronan had driven more than an hour in the early morning just to remind him of that. “You absolute bastard,” he muttered, but his chest was impossibly warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I had fun with this one so I hope you did, too!
> 
> Kudos are LOVE, comments are LIFE, and I'll love you forever for either.
> 
> If you want to watch me flail about and be sarcastic and swear a lot, follow me on [the tumbles](http://ridleymocki.tumblr.com/)
> 
> (And check out the other Pynch Week contributors! It's a wonderful week)


End file.
